When trying on my prom dress, I feel a deep and penetrating anxiety. My stomach has never been flat, so I push at it, squeeze it, try to hold it in. When I close my eyes, and then open them, standing sideways in the mirror, at first I appear normal. As I watch longer, my skin seems to expand, my curves ballooning out toward the edges of the glass. My arms get thicker, and my ass gets fatter, sadder. My posture is poor, so it looks even worse than it should. I start to cry, and put on a hooded sweatshirt. I don't think I will buy anything today.
I don't start eating differently until I am in college. When I turn nineteen, I get a job on an island with no cars. I walk up hills all day. I've been prescribed amphetamines, and I take them every day. I don't want to eat. I forget to. I sit with friends at dinner, talking a million miles a minute, gesturing with my hands, a plate of uneaten pasta in front of me. I grind my teeth.
When a friend from home sees a picture of me, she asks if I'm okay. I'm down to 119 pounds. In the photo, my ribs protrude, and my shorts fall off my hips. In another photo, I cover my face with my hands. You can see every bone in my arm, in my wrist. My hair falls out. I don't care, though, because I am finally perfect. I don't think about my body anymore.
I experience a hypomanic episode, after I break up with my girlfriend. That week, I don't sleep, I dye my hair black, I get a new tattoo, go home with three different people, and forget to eat. When I remember, I force myself to throw it up. I drink more and more, to try to handle myself. That year, I fight with many friends, and I feel that I am losing control. My life is slipping through my fingers, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I write notes on my mirror, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." "pizza or a thigh gap?" My roommate tells me she sees them, and that I need to relax.
That winter, I am diagnosed with a mood disorder, and attend a hospital psychiatric program. I talk about everything but the food, even as I peel orange after orange in the group circle, my fingers tinged yellow. I throw up in the parking lot.
That winter, I am diagnosed with a mood disorder, and attend a hospital psychiatric program. I talk about everything but the food, even as I peel orange after orange in the group circle, my fingers tinged yellow. I throw up in the parking lot.
One morning, I wake up to a vomit stain on the floor, tinged with red. I brag when I'm drunk, "I don't even have to make myself puke anymore. I just bend over, and it all falls out." My teeth are losing their enamel, and my voice is hoarse from cigarettes and stomach acid.
But none of this works, and I'm almost a hundred and eighty pounds. I stay this way for almost a year. I move in with my girlfriend, after we spend a summer in Chicago, where I drank every day. I don't wear jeans anymore, and stick to leggings. I diet obsessively. I lose weight, and I gain it, I eat nothing but egg whites for a week, and then binge the next Saturday, sitting down and eating an entire pizza to myself. I pinch and squeeze my fat, disgusting stomach, scratching it, burning it.
That spring, my therapist and I try something new, called EDMR. I remember things differently now. They are sharper, clearer, and they are worse than before. She helps me put two and two together, and although the edges are fuzzy, I can make out shadows in the background that I never realized were there. It destroys me, and I sit on the couch for days, paralyzed. My girlfriend tries to comfort me, but I can't look at her face. I am dehydrated from crying. I don't want to live in this body anymore.
A few weeks later, the therapist and I talk about food. I tell her I love cooking, and she asks me what I make. I tell her ingredients, measurements, calories, what I love, what I'm afraid of, when it's a good time to throw up. Looking down, I see I have a book in my hands, and I realize she gave it to me five minutes in. Snapping out of my fog, I read the words on the pages. They're a list, and she tells me to check the ones that apply to me. She tells me I have a EDNOS.
Eating Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified.
Returning to the island, I lose a lot of the weight. I remain at a healthy 140 for almost two years. Become so busy I forget about the stretch marks on my hips, the cellulite and dragging fat around my thighs.
One fall, in the midst of a tumultuous relationship, I sink into a deep, anxiety-ridden pit of depression. I have to be good again. I am afraid of being alone. So I try to be perfect, counting calories, eating kale, praying to some sort of deity that this person will love me, if only I am beautiful enough.
I remind myself how repulsive this body is, and that it doesn't deserve to be seen or touched by anyone. I dream about sewing my mouth closed, I forget to brush my teeth. I think about taking carpet scissors and ripping them up my torso, so my insides tumble out onto the floor. I fantasize about burning every opening shut into smooth, impenetrable tissue. I don't want to see or feel.
In the daytime, in the street, in corners of bars, men and women tell me I'm that I'm gorgeous. They buy me drinks, and they quietly tell my boyfriends that they picked a good one. I don't know what they are talking about, as I stare in grimy bathroom mirrors, my eyeliner streaming down my face, my dirty fingernails picking at my skin, pressing my stomach in. When I become afraid that someone will leave me, I pass forkful after forkful of anything and everything into my mouth, and heave it back out into the world as soon as I'm done.
Months later, I decide to live alone, in a strange city. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't have any distractions. I'm here for graduate school, and I find purpose. I have a schedule, money, I look forward to living. I buy fresh produce, healthy grains, make my own pasta sauce. I drag out my old food processor, and learn to make hummus. My new kitchen fills with the smell of spices, caramelized onions, sauteed vegetables. I begin to notice my skin clearer, brighter, my eyes not so dull. Not so bloated, I have water flowing through my veins.
That winter, I begin to have intense, squeezing pains in my stomach. It feels like burning, sometimes, and sometimes like someone punches me in the diaphragm over and over. I go to the hospital, many times. I have tests, scans, X-rays. No one can find out what is wrong. It gets worse, when I don't eat, so I try to keep something in my stomach at all times- bread, almonds, green peppers. I gain weight, but this time, I'm not so worried. I just want to live normally.
Every now and again, it pulls me back in. I panic over a tray of brownies, I cry when I eat too much spaghetti. Things to upset me happen, from time to time.
When things feel out of control, I turn to the kitchen. Watching a movie about anorexia on Netflix, I reconsider returning to before. I feel guilty after a night of drinking, and ending up at a diner. I think about ending all my relationships, quitting my job, neglecting school- focusing on only the food. My diet seems the most important thing.
I squint hard into the mirror, trying to find the thing I'm supposed to hate today. When I close my eyes, I try to think of my reflection as something I've never seen in my life. Usually, when I open them, it doesn't seem as bad. I try to listen when someone says something about me is pretty, and even more when it's nothing about that sort of thing at all.
I keep black in my closet, and drink eighty ounces of water a day. I go to school, order a milkshake, and I stop when I'm full. But I drink vodka on the weekends, and cry when I don't fit into my old jeans. I push it down, swallow hard, remind myself why I'm here, and that I'm more than my skin.
The fear will come and go, I was told. Take care of this body, she said, you won't get another one. You cannot fix everything, and doing any of this certainly won't help.
You won't be perfect, nobody ever will.
